Archives for themself - Page 8
new cover reveal for Themself
Firstly I would like to thank everyone that took time to give me feedback on the design of the new cover for Themself. In particular I'd like to name check Tom Mouat who first suggested a minimalist approach (as did a couple of others). This prompted me to spend some time looking at book covers in the bookshop at London Victoria train station. What I saw there was that nearly every non-fiction book (and a lot of the fiction) had a fairly minimalist cover. Bookshop visit I was sort of surprised by the number of books that have a block colour cover, large text for title & author, and nothing else. Although most of those also had a small illustration on the cover, usually about half the width and a third of the height. Those illustrations were simplified, not photo…
Help me pick a Title Font for my new book cover
I need your help to pick the title font for my new book cover. I'm in the process of re-designing the cover for the paperback version of Themself. My work in progress cover is a choice between either a photo (see below) or a minimalist plain cover. I'll survey on that in a little bit when I have more time to produce the full minimalist cover. Pick Themself's Title Font Right now I need some quantitative help with choosing options on the title font. I need something that speaks to people as 'creative writing' and works. So can you please do this one question surveymonkey to help me out, and share it around as well please? Thanks. Draft Cover for Themself in Paperback Here's what the new cover looks like so far. This isn't the final version, it needs some more…
Horror Movies – What Makes Them Properly Scary?
The Blair Witch Project (Photo credit: Wikipedia) On the way to school this morning Alexander was asking me what makes the Blair Witch Project a scary horror movie. He hasn't seen Blair Witch, but he has read the article on the sequel in the current Empire magazine. Ever since he has been obsessed about knowing how the Blair Witch Project went. Horror or Splatter? One of the things we talked about was whether or not you really need lots of blood and gore in a horror movie. There's certainly a visceral horror in seeing injured or dismembered people. But it is quite hard to get it right. We're good at understanding that it isn't real. If we don't think it is real then we cannot be truly terrified. Gore in a horror movie is like slapstick in a comedy. It…
500 Posts on Themself – milestone
Themself passed the 500 posts milestone earlier this week. I've been specifically writing for Themself since 5th July 2006, so it has taken me a decade to write 500 posts. That said, the earliest posts date from 1995, but they were originally written for the Chestnut Lodge Wargames Group newsletter Milmud. Of the posts I've written, 15 were slotted in before the real start of the blog. All of those come from other things I'd written for publication elsewhere. Part of the nature of the very early blog posts was that I didn't have a topic in mind, so they're pretty short and random. These days they'd probably turn up as facebook status updates. Back then there wasn't a facebook (or at least I didn't have an account). What really turned up the heat was doing the creative writing course…
Battle of the Somme 1916
Today is the centenary of the first infantry attacks in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Zero Hour was 07:30, and at that point the whistles blew and the infantry began their advance across no-man's land towards the German trenches. The infantry attack was preceded by over a week's artillery bombardment of one and a half million shells. A couple of minutes before H-hour several mines were detonated under the main German positions. Public Perceptions of the Battle of the Somme The Badly Shelled Road to Bapaume (21 Sept 1916) By Lt Ernest Brooks, via Wikimedia Commons This image gives the general public perception of WW1 in general, and the Battle of the Somme in particular. It is from the Battle of the Somme, but from 20th September 1916 rather than 1st July. The Somme battle was what churned…